June 14, 2012 11:24am EDTJune 13, 2012 12:29pm EDTTiger Woods' on-again, off-again relationship with golf continues today as the "Super Group," with Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson, has teed off at the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open has arrived. Cover your ears if you don’t want to hear the question that keeps consuming golf.

Is Jack Fleck back?

Or Scott Simpson, or Lee Janzen?

San Francisco’s Olympic Club is an A-list course that loves B-list golfers. That makes history the main subplot in this week’s installment of “Is Tiger Woods Back from Being Back from Being Back?”

Anyone could win at Olympic Club, except perhaps 14-year-old Andy Zhang or 91-year-old Fleck. He’s been hanging out at the clubhouse all week, re-living the 1955 U.S. Open when he beat Ben Hogan and Earth almost teetered off its axis.

So Fleck really is back. As for Tiger, there’s no doubt the Master has regained his skills.

Of course, we were saying the same thing in March after he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Woods went to the Masters as the favorite and left with a career-worst 40th place paycheck. He followed up with a missed cut and a 40th at The Players.

Just as the U.S. Department of Golf Status officially was declaring him Not Back, Tiger won the Memorial two weeks ago.

So is he or isn’t he?

Woods will never be back to what he was in 2000. But if he prevails this week, no one else would have three wins this year. He’d close in on the No. 1 world ranking. It also would break a majors drought that is celebrating its fourth anniversary.

It’s all there for Woods, beginning Thursday at 10:33 a.m. EDT when he tees off with Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson and the ghosts of Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Payne Stewart and Tom Watson. They are the big names that fell from the leaderboard and into Olympic’s discarded golfer pile.

“One of my predecessors, Frank Hannigan, once said that something magical always happens when we have a U.S. Open here, and he’s right,” USGA executive director Mike Davis said.

Magic probably wasn’t the word Watson or Stewart used at the time. Watson was set to win in 1987, then Simpson skulled a bunker shot that should have ended up in the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, it hit the flagstick and stopped inches from the hole. Simpson ended up beating Watson by a stroke.

Stewart was rolling in 1998 when a perfect drive stopped in a divot on No. 12. Luck was with Janzen, who hit a ball into a tree on No. 5.

He couldn’t play a shot 20 feet in the air, but the ball fell to the ground as Janzen was walking back to the tee box. He rallied from seven shots behind to beat Stewart.

When magic happens twice, it’s a pattern. If it happens four times, it’s time to call the Psychic Hotline. The 1966 Open was positively paranormal.

Greg Norman probably plays a tape of it whenever he gets depressed over the 1996 Masters. Palmer led by seven shots heading into the final nine holes. He unraveled and lost to Billy Casper. The King never won another major.

Then there was 1955. Hogan was Hogan and Fleck was a guy from Iowa who’d never won a tour event.

“I really liked the golf course,” he said. “It was right up my alley because you had to hit it straight and control the ball.”

That’s standard at the U.S. Open. Skinny fairways and diamond-hard greens level the field, allowing plodders like Simpson and Janzen to hang with the marquee mashers.

The USGA still is living down 1998, when it stuck a pin at crest of a ridge on No. 18. Stewart hit a short putt that crawled by the hole and then rolled another 40 feet. He could only watch and shake his head at the slow-motion hose job.

The USGA won’t do that again, we hope. It also won’t allow another 16-under winning score, like Rory McIlroy had last year at Congressional.

Olympic’s first six holes are sadistically long. Throw in the voodoo factor, and it’s only natural to start scanning the field for this year’s Fleck.

Could it be John Senden, Spencer Levin or Brandt Snedeker? That would thrill the boys at NBC. Or after the win at Memorial, has Tiger really, finally, truly re-mastered his game?

“I was doing it the correct way,” he said, “hitting the ball high and hitting it long. That was fun.”